T

V

W

Y

Z

Madeleine K. Albright

Madeleine Albright is a principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm, and chair and principal of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. Dr. Albright was the sixty-fourth secretary of state of the United States. In 1997, she was named the first female secretary of state and became, at that time, the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. As secretary of state, Dr. Albright reinforced America’s alliances, advocated democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade and business, labor, and environmental standards abroad. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. Albright served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and as a member of the president’s cabinet. She is the first Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She chairs both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. Dr. Albright co-chairs the UNDP Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor and serves on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the board of trustees for the Aspen Institute, and the board of directors of the Center for a New American Security. Dr. Albright earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Wellesley College and a Master degree and doctorate from Columbia University’s Department of Public Law and Government, as well as a certificate from its Russian Institute.

Richard L. Armitage

Richard L. Armitage’s nomination as Deputy Secretary of State was confirmed by the Senate on March 23, 2001. He was sworn in on March 26, 2001.

Since May 1993, Richard L. Armitage was President of Armitage Associates L.C. He had been engaged in a range of worldwide business and public policy endeavors as well as frequent public speaking and writing. Previously, he held senior troubleshooting and negotiating positions in the Departments of State and Defense, and the Congress.

From March 1992 until his departure from public service in May 1993, Mr. Armitage (with the personal rank of Ambassador) directed U.S. assistance to the new independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. In January 1992, the Bush Administration’s desire to jump-start international assistance to the NIS resulted in his appointment as Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance. During his tenure in these positions Mr. Armitage completed extensive international coordination projects with the European Community, Japan, and other donor countries.

From 1989 through 1992, Mr. Armitage filled key diplomatic positions as Presidential Special Negotiator for the Philippines Military Bases Agreement and Special Mediator for Water in the Middle East. President Bush sent him as a Special Emissary to Jordan’s King Hussein during the 1991 Gulf war.

In the Pentagon from June 1983 to May 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He represented the Department of Defense in developing politico-military relationships and initiatives throughout the world, spearheaded U.S.-Pacific security policy including the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-China security relationships, managed all DoD security assistance programs, and provided oversight of policies related to the law of the sea, U.S. special operations, and counter-terrorism. He played a leading role in Middle East Security Policies.

In May 1975 Mr. Armitage came to Washington as a Pentagon consultant and was posted in Tehran, Iran, until November 1976. Following two years in the private sector, he took the position as Administrative Assistant to Senator Robert Dole of Kansas in 1978. In the 1980 Reagan campaign, Mr. Armitage was senior advisor to the Interim Foreign Policy Advisory board, which prepared the President-Elect for major international policy issues confronting the new administration. From 1981 until June 1983 Mr. Armitage was Deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Born in 1945, Mr. Armitage graduated in 1967 from the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy. He served on a destroyer stationed on the Vietnam gunline and subsequently completed three combat tours with the riverine/advisory forces in Vietnam. Fluent in Vietnamese, Mr. Armitage left active duty in 1973 and joined the U.S. Defense Attache Office, Saigon. Immediately prior to the fall of Saigon, he organized and led the removal of Vietnamese naval assets and personnel from the country.

Mr. Armitage’s endeavors include past service on several Boards and committees. He has received numerous U.S. military decorations as well as decorations from the governments of Thailand, Republic of Korea, Bahrain, and Pakistan.

Mr. Armitage was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service four times, the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Award for Outstanding Public Service, the Presidential Citizens Medal, presented by the President to citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service, and the Department of State Distinguished Honor Award.

Dr. Ziad Asali

Ziad J. Asali, M.D., is the President and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine and a long-time activist on Middle East issues. He has been a member of the Chairman's Council of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) since 1982, and has served as ADC's President from 2001-2003. He served as the President of the Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) from 1993-1995, and was Chairman of the American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ), which he co-founded, from 1995-2003.

Born in Jerusalem, Dr. Asali received an M.D. from the American University of Beirut (AUB) Medical School in 1967. He is a Diplomat of the Board of Internal Medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has testified before the Senate on the issue of Palestinian education and recently testified at a hearing before the full U.S. House Committee on International Relations on the topic of "The Way Forward in the Middle East Peace Process." He served as a member of the United States official delegation to the funeral of Chairman Yasser Arafat and as a member of the United States official delegation to observe the Palestinian Presidential elections in January 2005.

Dr. Asali has been featured in Al Ahram Weekly the Washington Times and in the Forward. He has contributed and written for the Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, and The Daily Star. He is the author of several publications that include: "From Crusades to Zionism" (1993) "Zionist Studies of the Crusades" (1992) "Expedition to Jerusalem" (1990).

Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi

Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi was a veteran United Nations envoy and advisor. He retired from his duties at the end of 2005. Brahimi is a member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, the first global initiative to focus specificially on the link between exclusion, poverty and law.

Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi was appointed Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on 1 January 2004. As Special Adviser, Mr. Brahimi advised the Secretary-General on a wide range of issues, including situations in the areas of conflict prevention and conflict resolution.

Former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (from 3 October 2001 to 31 December 2004), Ambassador Brahimi was entrusted with overall authority for the political, human rights, relief, recovery and reconstruction activities of the United Nations in Afghanistan. Mr. Brahimi previously served as the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan from July 1997 until October 1999.

In between his Afghanistan assignments, Mr. Brahimi served as Under-Secretary-General for Special Assignments in Support of the Secretary-General's Preventive and Peacemaking efforts. In this capacity, he chaired an independent panel established by Secretary-General Annan to review United Nations peace operations. The report, released by the panel in 2000 and known as the "Brahimi Report", assessed the shortcomings of the existing system of peacekeeping and made specific recommendations for change, focusing on politics, strategy and operational and organizational areas of need.

Prior to his first Afghanistan appointment, Mr. Brahimi served as Special Representative for Haiti (from 1994 to 1996), and Special Representative for South Africa (from December 1993 to June 1994). In the latter position, he led the United Nations Observer Mission until the 1994 democratic elections that resulted in Nelson Mandela taking the presidency of post-apartheid South Africa. He has also undertaken special missions on behalf of the Secretary-General to a number of countries, including Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Yemen, Liberia, Nigeria and Sudan.

Mr. Brahimi was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Algeria from 1991 to 1993. He served as Rapporteur to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit).

From 1984 to 1991, he was Under-Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, and from 1989 to 1991, served as Special Envoy of the Arab League Tripartite Committee to Lebanon, mediating the end of the civil war in that country. Mr. Brahimi was Diplomatic Adviser to the President of Algeria from 1982 to 1984, Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1971 to 1979, and Ambassador to Egypt and the Sudan, as well as Permanent Representative to the Arab League in Cairo, from 1963 to 1970.

From 1956 to 1961, during Algeria's independence struggle, he was the National Liberation Front (FLN) representative in South-East Asia, resident in Jakarta.

Mr. Brahimi was educated in Algeria and France (law and political science), and is fluent in Arabic, English and French. Born on 1 January 1934, he is married with three children.

Daniel Brumberg

Daniel Brumberg serves as a special adviser for the USIP’s Muslim World Initiative in the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, where he focuses on issues of democratization and political reform in the Middle East and wider Islamic world. He is also an associate professor at Georgetown University and a former senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy and Rule of Law Project (2003–04).

He previously was a Jennings Randolph senior fellow at USIP, where he pursued a study of power sharing in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In 1997, Brumberg was a Mellon junior fellow at Georgetown University and a visiting fellow at the International Forum on Democratic Studies. He was a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Emory University and a visiting fellow in the Middle East Program in the Jimmy Carter Center, and has taught at the University of Chicago. Brumberg is the author of many articles on political and social change in the Middle East and wider Islamic world. With a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, he is currently working on a comparative study of power-sharing experiments in Algeria, Kuwait, and Indonesia.

A member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and the advisory board of the International Forum on Democratic Studies, Brumberg is also chairman of the nonprofit Foundation on Democratization and Political Change in the Middle East. He has worked closely with a number of nongovernmental organizations in the Arab world, including the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs. Brumberg is also a member of the editorial board of the American Political Science Association’s Political Science and Politics.

He received his B.A. from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a CSIS counselor and trustee and cochairs the CSIS Advisory Board. He is also the Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C.

He is cochair of the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus and is a former chairman of the American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee. He was a member of the Policy Planning Council of the Department of State from 1966 to 1968; chairman of the Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force in the 1968 presidential campaign; director of the Trilateral Commission from 1973 to 1976; and principal foreign policy adviser to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential campaign. From 1977 to 1981, Dr. Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Carter. In 1981 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in the normalization of U.S.-China relations and for his contributions to the human rights and national security policies of the United States.

He was also a member of the President’s Chemical Warfare Commission (1985), the National Security Council–Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy (1987–1988), and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1987–1989). In 1988, he was cochairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force, and in 2004, he was cochairman of a Council on Foreign Relations task force that issued the report Iran: Time for a New Approach.

Dr. Brzezinski received a B.A. and M.A. from McGill University (1949, 1950) and Ph.D. from Harvard University (1953). He was a member of the faculties of Columbia University (1960–1989) and Harvard University (1953–1960). Dr. Brzezinski holds honorary degrees from Georgetown University, Williams College, Fordham University, College of the Holy Cross, Alliance College, the Catholic University of Lublin, Warsaw University, and Vilnius University.

He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. His many books include Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower (forthcoming); The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership (2004); The Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe, and Russia (2001); The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997); and The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the 20th Century (1989).

Brigadier General Edward Cardon

Brigadier General Edward Cardon was commissioned as an engineer officer from the United States Military Academy in 1982. His military education includes the Engineer Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, Combined Arms Service Staff School, United States Naval Command and Staff College, the Armed Forces Staff College, and the National War College. BG Cardon is currently serving as Deputy Commandant of the Command and General Staff College, Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

BG Cardon has been married for 25 years to the former Linda Larmie. Their three children are Susan 23, Katherine 21, and Christopher 19.

Avner Cohen

A prominent expert on Israel’s nuclear policy and on global nuclear proliferation at large, Avner Cohen tackles the Iranian nuclear issue and considers its impact on the non-proliferation regime as well as on regional developments and perceptions about nuclear issues. He has been a senior research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland since 2000. Previous positions include service as a senior fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. and at the MIT Nuclear Arms Control in the Middle East Project, where he was also an acting codirector.

Cohen’s awards include research and writing grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a fellowship at Harvard University’s Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s designation of his book Israel and the Bomb as one of the best books in 1998. Cohen has authored and edited six books and also published numerous articles in academic journals such as Ethics, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Survival, Israel Studies, Security Studies, and The Nonproliferation Review. he has written many op-eds in leading newspapers in the United States and Israel.

Cohen holds an M.A. in philosophy from York University and a Ph.D. in the history of culture from the University of Chicago.

Beth Ellen Cole

Beth Cole is a senior program officer in the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations. She leads USIP’s Civilian Peacefare Initiative that began in 2007 with a multiyear project to produce comprehensive "doctrine" for civilians in stabilization and reconstruction missions. This includes work on other civilian capacity components such as building a civilian reserve, interagency planning and coordination, and training and education for civilians. Cole also co-chairs the Working Group on Civil-Military Relations in Non-Permissive Environments; an ongoing forum for the U.S. armed forces, U.S. government agencies and U.S. humanitarian assistance organizations. She serves as the lead for the USIP Afghanistan Security Project and is USIP’s official liaison to the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute.

Among other posts, Cole was past director of the Congressional Roundtable on Post-Cold War Relations in the U.S. Congress and a senior fellow at George Mason University’s Program on Peacekeeping Policy. Cole was a coauthor of the recent RAND book, The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building, published in January 2007. She coauthored a number of USIP Special Reports including, "Transitional Governance: From Bullets to Ballots" (2006) and "Building Civilian Capacity for U.S. Stability Operations: The Rule of Law Component" (2004), and she coauthored the Peace Through Law Education Fund’s A Force for Peace and Security: U.S. and Allied Commanders Views of the Military’s Role in Peace Operations and the Impact of Terrorism on States in Conflict, (2002) and A Force for Peace: U.S. Commanders Views of the Military's Role in Peace Operations (1999). Cole also served in positions at the Congressional Research Service and the U.S. Department of State working on arms control treaty issues and was executive director of several non-governmental organizations, including the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and the Peace Through Law Education Fund.

Cole received a B.A. in political science and French from the University of Vermont and completed Kent State University’s program on international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland.

Chester A. Crocker

Chester A. Crocker is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University where his teaching and research focus on conflict management and regional security issues. He served as chairman of the board of the United States Institute of Peace (1992-2004), and continues as a member of its board.

From 1981-1989, he was U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs. As such, he was the principal diplomatic architect and mediator in the prolonged negotiations among Angola, Cuba, and South Africa that led to Namibia’s transition to independence, and to the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. He serves on the boards of ASA Ltd., a NYSE-listed, closed-end fund focused on gold mining; Universal Corporation, Inc., a leading independent trading company in tobacco, agricultural and lumber products; Good Governance Group Ltd; and First Africa Holdings Ltd. He serves on the advisory board of the National Defense University in Washington.

Dr. Janine Davidson

Dr Janine Davidson joined the School of Public Policy at George Mason University as Assistant Professor in 2008 after being an adjunct professor with the school since 2005. Dr. Davidson is one of the U.S. Government’s leading experts in the field of stabilization operations, reconstruction, counterinsurgency and conflict transformation. As Director, DoD Stability Operations Capabilities in the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations she oversaw the implementation of DoD Directive 3000.05, “Military Support to Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR).” She led synchronization for the Irregular Warfare Roadmap, was the Department of Defense lead for the Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative, and was the head of the Consortium for Complex Operations, an innovative interagency project to enhance education, training, and performance in complex emergencies, including conflict prevention, peace operations, stabilization, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency.

Before joining Defense, Dr. Davidson was Director, Counterinsurgency Studies with the Center for Adaptive Strategies and Threats at Hicks and Associates, Inc, where she developed a reputation for excellence leading teams of analysts in counterinsurgency, terrorism, stability & reconstruction operations, Red Teaming and war-gaming. Dr. Davidson was an Associate and consultant at DFI Government Practice in Washington D.C. where she directed projects for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and for the Air Force Directorate of Strategic Planning. From 2003 to 2004 Dr. Davidson was a pre-doctoral Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution where she researched doctrine, education, and training for stability and reconstruction operations.

From 1988 to 1998, Dr. Davidson served in the United States Air Force as an aircraft commander and senior pilot for the C-130 and the C-17 cargo aircraft. She conducted combat support and humanitarian air mobility missions throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. As an instructor pilot, she also taught flying, aerodynamics, and navigation at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Her forthcoming book, The Fog of Peace, examines the U.S. military’s adaptation and learning processes for counterinsurgency and irregular war.

James Dobbins

Mr. Dobbins Directs RAND's International Security and Defence Policy Centre. He has held State Department and White House posts including Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Special Assistant to the President for the Western Hemisphere, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans, and Ambassador to the European Community. Mr. Dobbins has handled a variety of crisis management assignments as the Clinton Administration's special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and the Bush Administration's first special envoy for Afghanistan. He is the principal author of the two volume RAND History of Nation Building. In the wake of Sept 11, 2001, Mr. Rand was designated as the Bush Administration's representative to the Afghan opposition. He helped organize and then represented the United States at the Bonn Conference where a new Afghan government was formed.

Eric S. Edelman

Ambassador Eric S. Edelman is the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. His last assignment was as Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey from July 2003 to June 2005. From February 2001 to June 2003, he was Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. Prior to being assigned to the Office of the Vice President, he was Ambassador to the Republic of Finland, 1998-2001. From June 1996 to July 1998, he served as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State. Mr. Edelman was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic, from June 1994 to June 1996.

From April 1993 to July 1993, he served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large and Special Advisor to the Secretary of State on the New Independent States. Mr. Edelman’s areas of responsibility were defense, security and space issues.

Mr. Edelman served as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Soviet and East European Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) from April 1990 to April 1993.

From April 1989 to March 1990, he was Special Assistant (European Affairs) to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Mr. Edelman served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow 1987-89, where he was head of the external political section. He had responsibility for Soviet policies in the third world in the Office of Soviet Affairs at the Department of State from 1984 to 1986.

Previously, Mr. Edelman served as Special Assistant to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, 1982-84; a staff officer on the Secretariat Staff, 1982; a watch officer in the State Department Operations Center 1981-82; and a member of the U.S. Middle East Delegation to the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy Talks Delegations, 1980-81.

A career Foreign Service Officer, Mr. Edelman entered the Senior Foreign Service in 1992. He is a recipient of the Secretary of Defense’s award for Distinguished Civilian Service (1993) and the State Department’s Superior Honor Award (1990 and 1996).

Mr. Edelman received a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University in 1972, and a Ph.D. in U.S. Diplomatic History from Yale University in 1981.

Henrietta H. Fore

Henrietta H. Fore was nominated by President George W. Bush on May 7, 2007, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on November 14, 2007 as the new Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In that capacity, she is concurrently designated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance. As the first female Administrator of USAID, she is responsible for managing U.S. foreign assistance, including support to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms. She oversees a staff of approximately 8,000, of whom more than 75 percent are working overseas in USAID field offices.

Immediately prior to her confirmation as USAID Administrator, she served as Under Secretary of State for Management, a position she held beginning in August 2005. Prior to this appointment Fore served as the 37th Director of the United States Mint in the Department of Treasury between August 2001 - August 2005. She had also been a Presidential appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1989 -1993, first as Assistant Administrator for Private Enterprise in the U.S. Agency for International Development and then Assistant Administrator for Asia.

In addition to her foreign policy experience in government service, Henrietta Fore has held leadership positions in numerous international non-profit organizations. She was a Trustee and Executive Committee Member at the Center of Strategic and International Studies. She also served as Chairman of the Audit Committee and Member of the Executive Committee of the Aspen Institute Board of Trustees. In addition she served as a Trustee or Director of the Asia Society, The Asia Foundation, The Institute of the Americas, and the United States Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council.

As Director of the United States Mint, Ms. Fore managed the world's largest manufacturer of coins, medals, and coin products. The United States Mint produced 13 billion coins in 2004 for the nation's trade as well as gold, silver and platinum bullion coins and commemorative coins and medals for investors and collectors.

Earlier in her career Ms. Fore was a successful business woman running her own company and serving on the boards of public corporations. She was Chairman and President of Stockton Wire Products, a manufacturer and distributor of steel products, cement additives and wire building materials for the U.S. and European construction industry. She served on the Corporate Boards of the Dexter Corporation and HSB Group Inc., both listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Henrietta has a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Wellesley College and a Master of Science degree in Public Administration from the University of Northern Colorado. She received the 2004 Alumnae Award from the University of Northern Colorado and the 2006 Alumnae Award from the Baldwin School. She has also studied International Politics at Oxford University and studied at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She is married and lives in Washington, D.C., and Nevada. She is a keen sailor and collector of antique Holsman Automobiles.

Dr. Ashraf Ghani

Ashraf Ghani is currently Chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness, established to develop innovative approaches to the issue of state functionality in the contemporary world. As Adviser to the UN Secretary General he advised on the Bonn Agreement for Afghanistan and then as Afghanistan's Finance Minister he is credited with a series of successful reforms in Afghanistan, including reform of the treasury, customs, budget and the currency. He prepared Afghanistan's first National Development Framework and Securing Afghanistan's Future, a $28bn reconstruction program for the country. As Chancellor of Kabul University, he instituted a style of participatory governance to enlist the students in managing their university's transformation. Dr Ghani is involved on the advisory boards for a number of activities supporting the reform of global institutions, including the Commission on the UN High-Level Panel on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, IDEA, Brookings Institution's project on global insecurity, the Atlantic Council, and the World Justice Project of the American Bar Association. He is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

He was educated at the American University Beirut and Colombia University, and taught at Johns Hopkins and Berkeley Universities before joining the World Bank, where for a decade he led work on country strategies and policies. He was recently endorsed by the Wall Street Journal for the post of UN Secretary General and by the New York Times for the post of President of the World Bank. He has recently written a book with Clare Lockhart, entitled Fixing Failed States, published by Oxford University Press in May 2008.

Before joining USIP, he served as academic chair for defense economics at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University (2003-2007), where he pioneered work on development economics and resource management in Africa’s security sector. He was also lead faculty for the Center’s work on energy, maritime security and China. Prior employment includes: director for international programs, Intellibridge Corporation (now part of Eurasia Group); senior economist at the African Development Bank Group; research director at the Central Bank of Sierra Leone; and economist at the World Bank.

Gilpin holds a doctorate from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. His thesis was on Macroeconomic Stabilization and Parallel Markets (1993). He also holds an Executive Certificate in International Finance and Capital Markets from Georgetown University.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno

On 1 October 2000, the Secretary-General announced the appointment of Jean-Marie Guéhenno of France as Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations.

Mr. Guéhenno, a French national, has a vast experience in the field of diplomacy, defence and international relations, as well as in administration and management. He spent a part of his career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France as: member of the policy planning staff (1979-1981); head of cultural affairs of the French Embassy in the United States (1982-1986); Director of the policy planning staff (1989-1993); and Ambassador to the Western European Union (1993-1995).

Mr. Guéhenno was a member of the Commission responsible for the "White Paper On Defence" (1994), and has been the chairman of the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale since 1998. He has also been a member of the United Nations Secretary-General's Advisory Board on disarmament matters since 1999.

Mr. Guéhenno was educated at the École normale supérieure in Paris. He became a member of the Cour des comptes (The French Audit Office) after his graduation from the École nationale d'administration in 1976. He is presently in the section of the Court that audits the Ministry of Defence.

Sheldon Himelfarb

Sheldon Himelfarb currently serves as an Associate Vice President at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He joined USIP in June 2008 from The Corporate Executive Board, where he was on the Technology Practice Leadership Team, working with chief information officers on technology, business and management strategy. Prior to this he served as foreign policy adviser to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the head of North American Documentary Development for Yorkshire TV, and the CEO/Executive Producer for Common Ground Productions, the media division of Search for Common Ground. He is an award-winning filmmaker, former commentator for National Public Radio (Sunday Morning Edition) and author of numerous articles on politics, popular culture and media.

Sheldon holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University and a B. A. in Political Science from John Hopkins University. He has held visiting or guest scholar positions at the Brookings Institution, Harvard University and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Qamar-ul Huda

Qamar-ul Huda joined the U.S. Institute of Peace as a senior program officer in the Religion and Peacemaking program, one of the Centers of Innovation, in June 2005. His research focuses on Islamic thought and Islamic philosophy on violence, nonviolence, and conflict resolution. Prior to joining the Institute, Huda was a professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Boston College’s Theology Department (1997–2005) and a visiting professor of Islamic studies at the College of Holy Cross and Brandeis University.

He serves as adviser on interfaith relations to the archdiocese of Boston and has written on the subject of dialogue and interfaith studies as a critical way to foster peace. Previously, Huda focused on political, theological, and social history of Islamic mysticism and treatises dealing with Qur’anic hermeneutics.

He holds a B.A. from Colgate University and a Ph.D. in Islamic intellectual history from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Robert Joseph

Robert Joseph is currently a Senior Scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy. He also serves as U.S. Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation.

From June 2005 to March 2007, Ambassador Joseph served as the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. In this capacity, he was the principal State officer for non- and counterproliferation matters, as well as for arms control, arms transfers, regional security, and defense relations. Previously, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation and Homeland Defense, National Security Council. In this position he was responsible for developing and coordinating U.S. policies and strategies for preventing and defending against threats from weapons of mass destruction.

From 1992 until 2001, Dr. Joseph was Professor of National Security Studies and Director/Founder of the Center for Counterproliferation Research at the National Defense University. Prior to that he was U.S. Commissioner to the Standing Consultative Commission and to the U.S.-Russian Consultative Commission on Nuclear Testing, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy.

Dr. Joseph received his MA from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has held teaching positions at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tulane University, and Carleton College.

His awards include the National Defense University President's Award for Individual Achievement and the National Nuclear Security Administration Gold Medal for Distinguished Service. He also received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service (and Bronze Palm), and multiple Senior Executive Service Meritorious Achievements citations. In 2006, he was the recipient of the annual Ronald Reagan award for his contributions to U.S. missile defense.

John Kelly

John Kelly is the founder and lead scientist of Morningside Analytics. His research blends Social Network Analysis, content analysis, and statistics to solve the problem of making complex online networks visible and understandable.

John has an M.Phil. from Columbia University (Ph.D. pending), and has studied communications at Stanford and at Oxford’s Internet Institute. He is an Affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

Daniel C. Kurtzer

Daniel C. Kurtzer holds the S. Daniel Abraham Chair in Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Kurtzer retired from the Foreign Service at the end of 2005 with the rank of Career-Minister in the Senior Foreign Service. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel (2001-2005), and as the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt (1997-2001).

During 29 years of public service, Kurtzer held a number of senior policy and diplomatic positions, including political officer at the American embassies in Cairo and Tel Aviv, speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz on the Policy Planning Staff, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research.

Kurtzer received several of the U.S. Government’s most prestigious awards, including the President’s Distinguished Service Award, the Department of State Distinguished Service Award, the National Intelligence Community’s Award for Achievement, and the Director General of the Foreign Service Award for Political Reporting. In 2005, Ambassador and Mrs. Kurtzer were awarded the Henrietta Szold Award by Hadassah in recognition of their distinctive service on behalf of humanitarian causes.

Honorable Samuel W. Lewis

The Honorable Samuel W. Lewis, a graduate of Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, spent 31 years as a career diplomat prior to his most recent government service as Director of the Department of State's Policy Planning Staff in 1993 and 1994. During the five years which preceded his return to the State Department, he had been President and CEO of the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.

Lewis' Foreign Service career had included tours of duty in Italy, Brazil, Afghanistan, Israel and Washington - where he held such senior posts as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, Senior Staff member at the National Security Council, Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State, Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Staff, Charge d'affaires in Afghanistan, and Ambassador to Israel for the eight tumultuous years under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1977 to 1985, a period which spanned negotiation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the 1982 Lebanon War.

Since retiring from the Foreign Service in 1985, Lewis has been closely affiliated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as Counselor and now as a senior advisor; with the Brookings Institution, the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, and with research centers at Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Visiting Professor of International Relations at Hamilton College during the 1995 and 1997 academic years and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University in 1996, Lewis has received six honorary doctoral degrees and numerous other honor awards.

Nancy Lindborg

Nancy Lindborg's guidance and strategic vision have helped transform Mercy Corps into a respected, innovative international relief and development organization and global partner of choice.

During her ten years of leadership, the organization has experienced unprecedented growth and met new challenges with responsive, innovative programming. In her role as Mercy Corps President, Lindborg uses her expertise in public policy, economic development, post-conflict and disaster assistance to lead Mercy Corps' global planning, public affairs, program operations and development, and emergency response. She has directed the organization's launch of programs in such challenging places as Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, North Korea and tsunami-affected areas of southern Asia.

From her base in Washington, D.C., Lindborg currently serves as Vice-President on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign. In critical roles as co-chair of the National Committee on North Korea and Chair of the InterAction North Korea working group, she leads efforts to advance, promote and facilitate engagement between citizens of the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid.

Lindborg served from 2000-2005 on the Sphere Management Committee, an international initiative to improve the effectiveness and accountability of NGOs, and chaired that committee from 2000-2004. Lindborg also served as co-chair of the InterAction Disaster Response Committee from 1998-2002.

Before joining Mercy Corps in 1996, Lindborg managed economic development programs as a regional director in post-Soviet Central Asia and worked in the private sector as a public policy consultant in Chicago and San Francisco. She graduated with honors from Stanford University with a B.A. in English Literature. She also holds an M.A. in English Literature from Stanford and an M.A. in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Ambassador (Ret.) David C. Litt

Ambassador Litt served for 34 years as a career U.S. diplomat, specializing in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. In 2005-2006 he was the third-ranking officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, with the title of Political-Military Counselor, providing policy advice to the U.S. Ambassador, and serving as liaison between the Embassy and the Multi-National Forces – Iraq. His final assignment as a Foreign Service Officer, prior to retirement in 2008, was as the Associate Director for International Liaison at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Ambassador Litt entered the Foreign Service in 1974. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (1995-1998) and as Consul General in Dubai ten years prior. Ambassador Litt was Political Advisor to U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida (1998-2004). While at the Department of State, Ambassador Litt served as the Director of the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs (Iran and Iraq), and also as Desk Officer for Saudi Arabia. In addition to a tour as economic/commercial officer in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the late 1970s, he served twice as political officer in Damascus, Syria. Just prior to his recent service in Baghdad, he was the State Department’s Diplomat-in-Residence at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Other assignments included Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Niamey, Niger, and as a consular officer in Palermo, Italy. Among several other languages, he speaks Italian, French, Arabic, and Afghan-Persian (Dari).

Ambassador Litt received the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 2004 and USSOCOM’s Civilian Award for Outstanding Service in 2002. He also received the State Department's Superior Honor Award in 2002 and 2004 for his work with the U.S. military and in 2000 for his proposals to improve strategic planning at the Department of State. In addition, he earned a Superior Honor Award for his service as Ambassador to the UAE, and the Meritorious Honor Award as DCM in Niger.

Ambassador Litt was born on Dec. 27, 1949, in Pittsburgh, PA, and grew up in Miami, FL. He received a bachelor's degree with majors in history and French from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1971, and a master's degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. in 1973. At SAIS, he specialized in European affairs and international economics. He attended Harvard University's Program for Senior Executives in National and International Security at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2000.

He is married to the former Beatrice Ilardi, and has two children, Barbara and Giorgio.

William Luers

William Luers was elected in 1999 president of the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA), a center for innovative programs to engage Americans in issues of global concern. UNA-USA's educational and humanitarian campaigns, along with its policy and advocacy programs, allow people to make a global impact at the local level and encourage strong United States leadership in the UN. Prior to joining UNA-USA in February 1999, Ambassador Luers served for 13 years as president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Prior to his move to New York in 1986, Luers had a 31-year career in the Foreign Service. He served as US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983-1986) and Venezuela (1978-1982) and held numerous posts in Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, and in the Department of State, where he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (1977-1978) and for Inter-American Affairs (1975-1977). Luers has been a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He was also the director's visitor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 1982-1983.

Born in Springfield, Illinois, Luers received his B.A. from Hamilton College and his M.A. from Columbia University following four years in the United States Navy. He did graduate work in Philosophy at Northwestern University and holds honorary doctorate degrees from Hamilton College and Marlboro College.

An active member of the Council on Foreign Relations and other public policy organizations, Luers serves on a number of corporate and nonprofit boards, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The National Museum of Natural History, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the Rubin Art Museum. He is also chairman of the Advisory Board of The Center for Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California and of The Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He speaks on foreign affairs, diplomacy, the UN, and the arts, and has been widely published on foreign policy issues. He speaks Russian, Spanish and Italian.

Luers is married to Wendy Woods Luers, founder and president of The Foundation for Civil Society. He has four children and two stepchildren.

Duncan MacInnes

Duncan MacInnes is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service of the United States with the rank of Minister-Counselor. He was appointed Principal Deputy Coordinator of the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs in July, 2007. The IIP Bureau carries out a broad range programs for foreign audiences including websites in Arabic, Farsi and other key languages, electronic publications on policy issues and US speaker programs.

Prior to taking his current position, Mr. MacInnes established IIP’s new interagency Counterterrorism Communication Center to develop and coordinate communication strategies to combat extremist ideology. In 2005, he set up the State Department’s new 24/7 Rapid Response Unit (RRU), which monitors global news stories, analyzes important media trends and distributes a daily alert with key messages to cabinet secretaries and key policy makers in Washington and overseas.

David Makovsky

David Makovsky is a senior fellow and director of The Washington Institute's Project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is also an adjunct lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Mr. Makovsky is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. His commentary on the peace process and the Arab-Israeli conflict has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy, and National Interest. He appears frequently in the media to comment on Arab-Israeli affairs.

Before joining The Washington Institute, Mr. Makovsky was an award-winning journalist who covered the peace process from 1989 to 2000. He is the former executive editor of the Jerusalem Post and was diplomatic correspondent for Israel's leading daily Haaretz. Now a contributing editor to U.S. News and World Report, he served for eleven years as the magazine's special Jerusalem correspondent. He was awarded the National Press Club's 1994 Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence for a cover story on PLO finances that he co-wrote for the magazine.

Suzanne Maloney

Suzanne Maloney studies Iran, the political economy of the Persian Gulf and Middle East energy policy. A former U.S. State Department policy advisor, she has also counseled private companies on Middle East issues.

Admiral Michael G. Mullen

Admiral Mullen was sworn in as the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1, 2007. He serves as the principal military advisor to the president, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.

A native of Los Angeles, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968.

As a flag officer, Mullen commanded Cruiser-Destroyer Group 2, the George Washington Battle Group and the U.S. 2nd Fleet/NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic.

Ashore he has served in leadership positions at the Naval Academy, in the Navy's Bureau of Personnel, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on the Navy Staff. He was the 32nd Vice Chief of Naval Operations from August 2003 to October 2004.

His last operational assignment was as commander, NATO Joint Force Command Naples/Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe. Mullen is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School and earned a Master of Science degree in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Prior to becoming chairman, Mullen served as the 28th Chief of Naval Operations.

Dr. Robert C. Orr

Dr. Robert C. Orr was appointed Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning and Policy Coordination in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General in August 2004. His responsibilities include advising the Secretary-General on a full range of strategic issues, running the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee, and leading the Secretariat’s efforts to complete the UN reform agenda agreed to by world leaders at the 2005 World Summit. Dr. Orr serves as the principal policy advisor to the Secretary-General on climate change and chairs the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force, which coordinates 24 UN entities involved in counter-terrorism activities.

Dr. Orr joined the United Nations from Harvard University where he served as the Executive Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.

From 1996 to 2001, Dr. Orr served in senior posts in the Government of the United States, including Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Director of the USUN Washington office, where he was instrumental in securing an agreement to have the United States pay its arrears to the United Nations. He also served as Director of Global and Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council, where he was responsible for peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs. Prior to this government service, Dr. Orr worked for the International Peace Academy in New York, and with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Nairobi, Kenya.

From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Orr co-directed a bipartisan commission on post-conflict reconstruction sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and the Association of the United States Army.

Dr. Orr has published extensively on post-conflict reconstruction, the United Nations, peacekeeping, and democracy promotion. His publications include Winning the Peace: an American Strategy for Post-Conflict Reconstruction (CSIS Press, 2004) and Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Dr. Orr received his Ph.D. and M.P.A. in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He speaks Spanish and Mandarin.

Dr. Orr is married and has two children.

Tom Perriello

Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA) has worked as an independent national security consultant in central and southern Afghanistan. In 2005 and 2007, he spent time assessing the Taliban's resurgence and strategies (primarily political) for restoring control. He conducted research in seven different provinces and managed a team of 60 across the country. Under the auspices of his own organization (Res Publica) and others, Perriello briefed embassy leaders in Kabul, UN mission chiefs, and various agencies of the Bush Administration. He also provided background briefings for media, U.S. Representatives, and think tanks such as the Center for American Progress. He has also worked in national security efforts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kosovo, and Darfur.

William J. Perry

William J. Perry, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor at Stanford University, with a joint appointment in the School of Engineering and the Institute for International Studies, where he is codirector of the Preventive Defense Project, a research collaboration of Stanford and Harvard Universities. His previous academic experience includes professor (halftime) at Stanford from 1988 to 1993, when he was the codirector of the Center for International Security and Arms Control. He also served as a part-time lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Santa Clara University from 1971 to 1977.

Perry was the nineteenth United States secretary of defense, serving from February 1994 to January 1997. His previous government experience was as deputy secretary of defense (1993–94) and undersecretary of defense for research and engineering (1977–81).

Perry's business experience includes serving as a laboratory director for General Telephone and Electronics (1954–64); founding and serving as the president of ESL (1964–77); executive vice-president of Hambrecht & Quist (1981–85); and founding and serving as the chairman of Technology Strategies and Alliances (1985–93). He serves on the board of directors of Anteon International Corporation and several emerging high-tech companies and is chairman of Global Technology Partners.

Perry was born October 11, 1927, in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. He attended grade school and high school in Butler, Pennsylvania. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State, all in mathematics. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1946 to 1947, Perry was an enlisted man in the Army Corps of Engineers and served in the Army of Occupation in Japan. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1948 and was a second lieutenant in the army reserves from 1950 to 1955.

Perry has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1997), the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal (1980 and again in 1981), and Outstanding Civilian Service Medals from the army (1962 and 1997), the air force (1997), the navy (1997), the Defense Intelligence Agency (1977 and 1997), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1981), and the coast guard (1997). He received the American Electronic Association's Medal of Achievement (1980), the Eisenhower Award (1996), the Marshall Award (1997), the Forrestal Medal (1994), and the Henry Stimson Medal (1994). The National Academy of Engineering selected him for the Arthur Bueche Medal (1996). He has been honored with awards from the enlisted personnel of the army, navy, and air force. Perry has received decorations from the governments of Germany, England, France, Korea, Albania, Poland, Ukraine, Bahrain, Slovenia, Hungary, and Japan.

General David H. Petraeus

General David H. Petraeus will assume command of the United States Central Command in October 2008. He recently relinquished command of the Multi-National Force-Iraq after over 19 months at the helm of the Coalition force in Iraq.

Previous to his tour as MNF-I Commander, he commanded the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth. Before that assignment, he was the first commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, which he led from June 2004 to September 2005, and the NATO Training Mission- Iraq, which he commanded from October 2004 to September 2005. That deployment to Iraq followed his command of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), during which he led the “Screaming Eagles” in combat throughout the first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His command of the 101st followed a year deployed on Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia, where he was the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations of the NATO Stabilization Force and the Deputy Commander of the US Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorism Task Force-Bosnia. Prior to his tour in Bosnia, he spent two years at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, serving first as the Assistant Division Commander for Operations of the 82nd Airborne Division and then as the Chief of Staff of XVIII Airborne Corps.

General Petraeus was commissioned in the Infantry upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1974. He has held leadership positions in airborne, mechanized, and air assault infantry units in Europe and the United States, including command of a battalion in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and a brigade in the 82nd Airborne Division. In addition, he has held a number of staff assignments: Aide to the Chief of Staff of the Army; battalion, brigade, and division operations officer; Military Assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander - Europe; Chief of Operations of the United Nations Force in Haiti; and Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Petraeus was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Class of 1983. He subsequently earned MPA and Ph.D. degrees in international relations from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and later served as an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the US Military Academy. He also completed a fellowship at Georgetown University.

Awards and decorations earned by General Petraeus include two awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, two awards of the Distinguished Service Medal, two awards of the Defense Superior Service Medal, four awards of the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, the State Department Superior Honor Award, the NATO Meritorious Service Medal, and the Gold Award of the Iraqi Order of the Date Palm. He is a Master Parachutist and is Air Assault and Ranger qualified. He has also earned the Combat Action Badge and French, British, and German Jump Wings. In 2005 he was recognized by the U.S. News and World Report as one of America’s 25 Best Leaders, and in 2007 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential leaders and revolutionaries of the year and one of four runners-up for Time Person of the Year. Most recently, he was selected in a poll conducted by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals and was chosen by Esquire magazine as one of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.

Daniel B. Poneman

Daniel B. Poneman is a Senior Fellow of The Forum for International Policy, Mr. Poneman has extensive expertise in the defense, energy and export control arenas. For nine years, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., assisting clients in a wide variety of regulatory and policy matters, including export controls, trade policy, and sanctions issues. From 1993 through 1996, Mr. Poneman served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls at the National Security Council, with responsibilities for the development and implementation of U.S. policy in such areas as peaceful nuclear cooperation, missile technology and space-launch activities, sanctions determinations, chemical and biological arms control efforts and conventional arms transfer policy. During that period, he participated in negotiations and consultations with governments in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the former Soviet Union. Mr. Poneman joined the NSC staff in 1990 as Director of Defense Policy and Arms Control, after service in the Department of Energy. He has served as a member of the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction as well as other federal advisory panels. He received A.B. and J.D. degrees from Harvard University, and an M.Litt. in politics from Oxford University. Mr. Poneman is the author of books on nuclear energy policy and on Argentina, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Steven Radelet

Steven Radelet is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he works on issues related to foreign aid, developing country debt, economic growth, and trade between rich and poor countries. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for Africa, the Middle East, and Asia from January 2000 through June 2002. In that capacity he was responsible for developing policies on U.S. financial relations with the countries in these regions, including debt rescheduling and programs with the IMF, World Bank, and other international financial institutions. He oversaw policy development on the U.S. response to Turkey’s financial crisis, Pakistan’s debt restructuring, India’s financial relationships with the U.S., the aftermath of Indonesia’s financial crisis, Nigeria’s re-engagement with the international financial institutions, and development issues throughout Africa. From 1990-2000 he was on the faculty of Harvard University, where he was a Fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), Director of the Institute's Macroeconomics Program, and a Lecturer on Economics and Public Policy. From 1991-95, he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he was HIID's resident advisor on macroeconomic policy to the Indonesian Ministry of Finance. He served in a similar capacity with the Ministry of Finance and Trade in The Gambia from 1986-88. He was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in Western Samoa from 1981-83. He currently serves as an economic advisor to the President and the Minister of Finance of Liberia.

His research and publications have focused on foreign aid, economic growth, financial crises, and trade policy in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. He has written numerous articles in economics journals and other publications, is co-author of Economics of Development (a leading undergraduate textbook), and author of Challenging Foreign Aid: A Policymaker’s Guide to the Millennium Challenge Account.

Daniel P. Serwer

Daniel P. Serwer is vice president of the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations and the Centers of Innovation. He coordinates the Institute's efforts in societies emerging from conflict, especially Afghanistan, the Balkans, Haiti, Iraq, and Sudan. He also leads the Institute’s innovative programs in rule of law, religion and peacemaking, economics of peace and conflict, media and conflict, and diaspora contributions to peace and conflict.

Serwer has worked on preventing interethnic and interreligious conflict in Iraq, and he has been deeply engaged in facilitating dialogue between Serbs and Albanians. He came to the Institute as a senior fellow working on Balkan regional security in 1998–1999. Before that he was a minister-counselor at the Department of State, where he won six performance awards. As State Department director of European and Canadian analysis in 1996–1997, he supervised the analysts who tracked Bosnia and Dayton implementation as well as the deterioration of the security situation in Albania and Kosovo.

Serwer served from 1994 to 1996 as U.S. special envoy and coordinator for the Bosnian Federation, mediating between Croats and Muslims and negotiating the first agreement reached at the Dayton peace talks. From 1990 to 1993, he was deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he led a major diplomatic mission through the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War.

Samer Shehata

Samer Shehata is an Assistant Professor of Arab Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Dr. Shehata teaches courses on Arab and Middle East politics, comparative politics, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, Egyptian politics, culture and politics in the Arab world and other subjects. He served as the Acting Director of the Master of Arts in Arab Studies Program during the 2002-2003 academic year. Before coming to Georgetown he spent one year as a Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and another as Director of Graduate Studies at New York University's Center for Near Eastern Studies. He finished a PhD in the Politics Department at Princeton University in 2000 and has also taught at the American University in Cairo. Shehata's research interests include Middle East politics and U.S. foreign policy; the political economy of the Middle East; social class, labor and inequality; globalization and its impact on the Arab world and developing countries; "development"; ethnography and the Hajj. His work has appeared in Middle East Policy, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Arab Reform Bulletin, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Salon, Slate, Al Hayat and other publications.

His dissertation "Plastic Sandals, Tea and Time: Shop Floor Politics and Culture in Egypt," received the Malcolm Kerr Dissertation Award in the social sciences from the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 2001. In the spring of 2002, he developed a popular course (co-taught with Professor Michael Hudson) entitled "The US, the Middle East, and the War on Terrorism," which continues to be taught at Georgetown University. The course has been featured on the BBC Newsnight, Fox News and NPR's 'All Things Considered.'
Dr. Shehata has been interviewed for commentary by a wide range of media including CNN, BBC, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, C-Span, NPR, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiyya, Egyptian Satellite TV, Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC), NPR, New York Times, and the Washington Post and he has also testified before the US Congress.

Wendy R. Sherman

Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman is a Principal of The Albright Group, an international advisory firm. Prior to forming the group, from July 1997 through January 2001, she was the Counselor of the Department of State (DOS), with rank of Ambassador, appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the United States Senate. Ambassador Sherman served then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as a special advisor and consultant on major issues of foreign policy, provided guidance to the DOS and undertook special assignments. At the same time, she was the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State, and the North Korea Policy Coordinator.

Ambassador Sherman has worked for over 25 years in both the public and private sectors; in national, state and local organizations; and in international arenas and neighborhoods. From April 1996 until July 1997, she was President and CEO of the Fannie Mae Foundation and a member of the operating committee of Fannie Mae. At the Foundation, she set in place the groundwork for the newly recreated foundation developed to promote home ownership.

From 1993 to 1996, Ambassador Sherman served Secretary of State Warren Christopher as Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, where she directed the legislative efforts of the DOS with Congress. Among other issues, she led the successful efforts to obtain the funding for Russia and the Newly Independent States after the break-up of the Soviet Union and support for the Dayton accords.

From 1991 to 1993, she specialized in strategic communications as a partner in the political and media consulting firm of Doak, Shrum, Harris and Sherman. Prior to that, she directed EMILY’s List, the largest financial and political resource for pro-choice Democratic women candidates. She is credited with the organization’s strategic development that led to groundbreaking numbers of candidates in 1992.

Ambassador Sherman directed Campaign ’88 for the Democratic National Committee, where she oversaw field and political operations, communications, congressional relations, constituency operations, issue development and coordination with all federal, state and local campaigns during the 1988 general election.

Prior to that, Ambassador Sherman worked in a variety of positions in both government and nonprofit organizations: chief of staff for three years for then Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski, campaign manager for Mikulski’s first successful Senate campaign; Special Secretary for Children and Youth in Maryland (a cabinet-level position); and Director of Maryland’s Office of Child Welfare, supervising protective services, foster care, adoptions and group homes.

Ambassador Sherman attended Smith College from 1967 to 1969, and completed her Bachelor of Arts cum laude from Boston University in 1971. In 1976, she earned a master’s degree in social work, Phi Kappa Phi, from the University of Maryland."

Ivan Sigal

Ivan Sigal recently became Executive Director of Global Voices, a non-profit online global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Previously he spent ten years working in media development in the former Soviet Union and Asia, supporting and training journalists and working on media co-productions. As a Senior Fellow at USIP, Ivan Sigal focused on how increased media and information access and participation using new technologies affect conflict-prone areas, particularly in Central and South Asia and the Horn of Africa. Prior to USIP, Sigal was the Internews regional director for Asia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, and the country director for Tajikistan.

Sigal has designed and implemented numerous media assistance projects, including helping to create more than thirty Afghan-run radio stations; a project to provide humanitarian information to victims of the 2005 South Asian earthquake in Pakistan-administered Kashmir; and a post-2004 tsunami humanitarian information radio program in Sri Lanka.

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Anne-Marie Slaughter is Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Prior to becoming Dean, she was the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign and Comparative Law and the Director of Graduate and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. She is also the former President of the American Society of International Law. Dean Slaughter is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. Drawing from this rich interdisciplinary expertise, Slaughter writes and teaches broadly on global governance, international criminal law, and American foreign policy. Her most recent book is The Idea that Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World, published by Basic Books. She is also the author of A New World Order, in which she identified transnational networks of government officials as an increasingly important component of global governance. Dean Slaughter is a frequent commentator on foreign affairs in newspapers, radio, and television. She was a regular contributor to the America Abroad blog on TPMCafe.com, and still contributes periodically to TPMCafe. She is also the convener and academic co-chair of the Princeton Project on National Security, a multi-year research project aimed at developing a new, bipartisan national security strategy for the United States, and is a member of the National War Powers Commission.

Richard H. Solomon

Richard H. Solomon has been president of the Institute since September 1993. As assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 1989 to 1992, he negotiated the first U.N. “Permanent Five” peacemaking agreement for Cambodia, had a leading role in the dialogue on nuclear issues among the United States and South and North Korea, helped establish the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) initiative, and led U.S. negotiations with Japan, Mongolia and Vietnam on important bilateral matters. From 1992 to 1993, Solomon served as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines. In that capacity, he coordinated the closure of the U.S. naval bases and developed a new framework for bilateral and regional security cooperation. Solomon previously served as director of the Policy Planning at the State Department (1986–89) and senior staff member of the National Security Council (1971–76), where he was involved in the process of normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China. From 1976 to 1986, he was head of the Social Science Department at the RAND Corporation. In 1995, Solomon was awarded the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service for his role in obtaining international agreement for – and fostering implementation of – the U.N. peace plan for Cambodia. In 2005, Solomon was awarded the Hubert H. Humphrey Award for a career of “notable public service by a political scientist” by the American Political Science Association. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John D. Sullivan, Ph.D.

John Sullivan is Executive Director of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As Associate Director of the Democracy Program, Sullivan helped to establish both CIPE and the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. After serving as program director, Sullivan became Executive Director in 1991. Under his leadership CIPE developed a number of innovative approaches that link democratic development to market reforms including: combating corruption, promoting corporate governance, building business associations, supporting the informal sector, and programs to assist women and youth entrepreneurs. Sullivan joined the U.S. Chamber in 1977 in the Public Affairs Department as a specialist in business and economic education. While in the Public Affairs Department he ran a clearinghouse that specialized in assisting corporations, chambers, associations, and universities in developing their own in-house programs. Prior to joining the Chamber, Sullivan was a member of President Ford’s Election Campaign and had worked in Los Angeles’ inner-city neighborhoods helping to develop minority business programs.

Sullivan's academic specialties buttress his international interests. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of several publications on the transition to democracy, corporate governance, and market-oriented democratic development. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) as well as at George Mason University Graduate School of Public Affairs. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Russian Institute of Directors’ Advisory Board, the Bretton Woods Association, and the American Political Science Association.

J Alexander Thier

J Alexander Thier joined the Institute as senior adviser in the Rule of Law program, one of the Centers of Innovation, in 2005. He is director of the project on constitution making, peacebuilding, and national reconciliation, director of the Future of Afghanistan Project, and an expert group lead on the Genocide Prevention Task Force. Thier also co-founded the International Network to Promote the Rule of Law while at USIP. He is also responsible for several rule-of-law programs in Afghanistan, including a project on establishing relations between Afghanistan’s formal and informal justice systems. Thier was a member of the Afghanistan Study Group, which issued its report in January 2008, and is a member of the Pakistan Policy Working Group (report forthcoming).

Thier was the director of the Project on Failed States at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. From 2002 to 2004, Thier was legal adviser to Afghanistan’s Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul, where he assisted in the development of a new constitution and judicial system.

Thier has worked as a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, as a legal and constitutional expert to the British Department for International Development, and as an adviser to the Constitutional Commission of Southern Sudan. Thier worked as a UN and non-governmental organization official in Afghanistan from 1993 to 1996, where he was the officer-in-charge of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan in Kabul. He also served as coordination officer for the UN Iraq Program in New York. An attorney, Thier was a Skadden fellow and a graduate fellow at the U.S. National Security Council’s Directorate for Near-East and South Asia. He received the Richard S. Goldsmith award for outstanding work on dispute resolution from Stanford University in 2000.

He has a B.A. from Brown University, a master’s in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Francesc Vendrell

Francesc Vendrell holds the position of EU Special Representative for Afghanistan since July 2002. Between January 2000 and December 2001 he served as the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA). He has also held several other senior positions in the UN which he joined in 1968, including Director, Asia and the Pacific Division, Department of Political Affairs in 1993-99, serving concurrently as the Secretary-General’s Deputy Personal Representative for East Timor, Special Envoy for Papua New Guinea and for Cambodia. Appointed Special Envoy for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1992, Mr Vendrell was head of the Europe and Americas section in the Office of the Secretary-General in 1987-92, serving concurrently as his Deputy Personal Representative for the Peace Process in Central America.

Dr. Linton Wells II

Dr. Linton Wells II is a Distinguished Research Fellow and serves as the Force Transformation Chair at NDU. Prior to coming to NDU he was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Networks and Information Integration). He assumed these duties on November 14, 2005 after serving as the Acting Assistant Secretary and DoD Chief Information Officer from March 8, 2004. He became the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence) on August 20, 1998 which became Networks and Information Integration in 2003. Prior to this assignment, he had served in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) from 1991 to 1998, most recently as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Policy Support).

Dr. Wells has written widely on security studies in English and Japanese journals. He co-authored Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War, which was published in 1997. His hobbies include history, the relationship between policy and technology, scuba diving, and flying.

J. Robinson West

J. Robinson West is the chairman and founder of PFC Energy. He has advised chief executives of leading international oil and gas companies and national oil companies on corporate strategy, portfolio management, acquisitions, divestitures, and investor relations. Before founding PFC in 1984, Robin served in the Reagan Administration as assistant secretary of the Interior for Policy, Budget and Administration (1981-83), with responsibility for U.S. offshore oil policy. Robin conceived and implemented the five-year Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Leasing Schedule and managed the $14 billion per year OCS policy, the largest non-financial auction in the world at that time. Between 1977 and 1980, he was a first vice president at Blyth, Eastman, Dillon & Co., Inc., an investment banking firm and was also a member of the firm’s operating committee. Prior to that, he served in the Ford Administration as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for International Economic Affairs (1976-77) and on the White House staff (1974-76). In 1976, he received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Civilian Service. West is a member of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the National Petroleum Council, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is president of the Wyeth Endowment for American Art. He has served as a trustee of the $3 billion Trans-Alaska Pipeline Liability Fund, as a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Advisory Panel, the Industry Policy Advisory Committee on Multilateral Trade Negotiations of the U.S. Trade Representative, and on the National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children. West was a presidential representative to the Yemen Arab Republic in 1987 and was appointed by the president to the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere in 1977. West received a B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a J.D. from Temple University. West is married to Eileen Shields West, a journalist, and has four children, and resides in Washington, D.C.

Abiodun Williams

Abiodun Williams is vice president of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. Previously, he served as associate dean of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. From 2001 to 2007, he served as director of the Strategic Planning Unit in the Executive Office of the U.N. Secretary General. In that capacity, he advised secretaries-general Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon on a full range of strategic issues including U.N. reform, conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and international migration. He also managed relations with the U.N.’s international research and training institutes. He had three peacekeeping assignments: special assistant to the deputy special representative of the secretary-general, U.N. Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1999-2000.); special assistant to the representative of the secretary-general in Haiti (1998-2000); and political and humanitarian affairs officer, U.N. Preventive Deployment Force in Macedonia (1994-1998).

His previous academic appointments include: assistant professor of international relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University (1988-1994); visiting assistant professor in the political science department at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, University of Rochester (1987-1988); and teaching assistant and lecturer at Tufts University (1984-1987).

Dr. Williams is vice-chair of the Academic Council on the U.N. System, member of the editorial board of Global Governance, honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and advisor to the Club of The Hague on the future of Refugee and Migration Policy. He has served on the International Board of Directors of the United World Colleges, the Board of Trustees of Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific, the Board of Directors of Jesuit International Volunteers, and the Advisory Board of QSI International School of Skopje. He has published widely on conflict prevention, peacekeeping operations and multilateral negotiations.

In 1990, Dr. Williams was awarded a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the Constantine E. McGuire Medal by Georgetown University in 1991. He won the School of Foreign Service’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 1992. Dr. Williams holds an M.A. (honors) in english language and literature from Edinburgh University, and an M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Frank G. Wisner

Frank G. Wisner joined the American International Group as Vice Chairman, External Affairs on August 27, 1997. He is a member of AIG's Board of Directors.

Before joining AIG, Wisner was a member of the United States Foreign Service and held the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest grade in the Foreign Service. From August 1994 until July 1997, Mr. Wisner served as Ambassador to India. Before New Delhi, his most recent assignment was as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, from January 1993 to June 1994. Prior to that, he served as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs from July 1992 until January 1993. Mr. Wisner represented the United States in the Philippines as Ambassador from August 1991 until June 1992; served as Ambassador to Egypt from August 1986 until June 1991. Mr. Wisner was Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs from April 1982 to April 1986, a period of intense diplomatic engagement in Southern Africa at a time of conflict in Angola, Mozambique and Namibia and in the history of the end of Apartheid in South Africa. He served as Ambassador to Zambia from August 1979 to April 1982.

Frank G. Wisner joined the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in December 1961, and after Western Arabic Language training in Morocco, was assigned to Algiers immediately after independence from France. In 1964, he was detailed to the Agency for International Development in Vietnam. He remained in Vietnam in the pacification program until 1968, serving in succession as Staff Aide to the Deputy Chief of Mission, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Civil Operations, and Senior Advisor to the Vietnamese province of Tuyen Duc.

Returning to Washington in December 1968, Mr. Wisner was Officer in Charge of Tunisian Affairs in the State Department, where he remained until July 1971, when he was named chief of the Economic-Commercial Section at the American Embassy in Tunis. He then serviced as chief of the Political Section in Dhaka, Bangladesh, shortly after independence, from July 1973 until March 1974. From March 1974 until April 1975, Mr. Wisner was Director of Plans and Management in the Bureau of Public Affairs in Washington. He then joined the President's Interagency Task Force on Indochina - - the agency responsible for evacuating and then settling nearly one million refugees. He was Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Joseph Sisco, from August 1975 until July 1976. Mr. Wisner was named Director of the Office of Southern African Affairs in July 1976 and worked with Secretary Kissinger to launch negotiations over Zimbabwe and Namibia. At the beginning of President Carter's administration, he joined Secretary Vance's staff as Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State.

Currently, he is on the board U.S. India Business Council. Frank Wisner is a member of the Boards of Directors of EOG Resources and Ethan Allen in addition to his duties on the Boards of ALICO and the AIG Investment Bank in Russia. Mr. Wisner is on the Board of Hakluyt, a British corporate investigation firm. Frank Wisner also serves as Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bangladesh Business Council and Vice Chairman of the Business Council on International Understanding. His non-profit board affiliations include Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the American University of Beirut, the American University of Cairo, the American School of Tangiers, Refugees' International, United Service Organization, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Business Committee, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown, Princeton University's Middle Eastern Affairs Advisory Board and The American Hospital in Paris.

Frank Wisner was born in New York in 1938. He graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. degree in 1961. He is married to the former Christine de Ganay. They have four children.

Mona Yacoubian

Mona Yacoubian is a special adviser to the Institute’s Muslim World Initiative, where she provides analysis and policy advice on the Middle East and North Africa. She has worked on a broad range of issues in the region, including democratization and civil society promotion, as well as counterterrorism strategy. Yacoubian has consulted for a number of organizations, including the World Bank, the Department of State, RAND Corporation, and Freedom House.

From 1990 to 1997, Yacoubian served as the North Africa analyst in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where she focused on the crisis in Algeria. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), she is a frequent commentator on leading U.S. and international news outlets. She was a Fulbright scholar in Syria and an international affairs fellow at CFR, where she published a monograph titled "Algeria’s Struggle for Democracy."

Yacoubian earned a B.A. in public policy from Duke University and a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Robert B. Zoellick

Robert B. Zoellick became the 11th president of the World Bank Group on July 1, 2007. Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Zoellick served as Vice Chairman, International of the Goldman Sachs Group. He served in the President’s Cabinet as the 13th U.S. Trade Representative from 2001 to 2005 and as Deputy Secretary of State from 2005 to 2006. From 1985-1993, Mr. Zoellick served at the Treasury and State Departments, as well as briefly in the White House. During the 1990s, Mr. Zoellick served as an Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae. He earned a J.D. magna cum laude from the Harvard Law School, a MPP from the Kennedy School of Government, and a BA (Honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Swarthmore College.